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Augusta, Ga. • The wind blew sand out of the bunkers, one player after another faded toward the end of his round and absolutely nobody could have seen a 65 coming as the Masters unfolded at Augusta National Golf Club.

Not even Charley Hoffman himself could have imagined anything like this, when he stood 1 over par after five holes. But then the birdies started coming, and they didn't stopped until the former UNLV golfer barely missed his bid to close with five of them in a row Thursday.

Hoffman settled for a par on No. 18 and a 7-under total — a number that once almost seemed good enough to end up as Sunday's winning score, the way things were looking in the opening round.

"I mean, anything around par would have obviously been a great score," he said. "I knew that going into it."

William McGirt liked his 69 when he finished in the mid-afternoon. Aware that other golfers had risen and fallen all day, he said, "I was just trying to figure out how to get it to the house without hurting myself."

Phil Mickelson sounded thrilled with his 71, believing — like Hoffman — that "anything at par or better was going to be a great score, and it is."

Well, it was, except in comparison to Hoffman. McGirt, a Masters rookie, was the only other player in the 60s. Lee Westwood posted a 70 and eight golfers were at 71. The thing is, some of them got to that 1-under number from the wrong direction, with Jason Dufner making two late bogeys and Matthew Fitzpatrick double-bogeying No. 18.

That's the context for Hoffman's strong finish. Wearing a green cap and a green glove, he kept producing increasingly higher red numbers on the scoreboards around the course.

"For lack of any better words, it was a dream," Hoffman said.

He's 40 years now, no longer distinguished by his flowing blond hair, but he's still an aggressive golfer who can get hot and shoot low scores. Hoffman is a four-time PGA Tour winner and he tied for ninth place in the 2015 Masters, so he's capable of winning a green jacket.

This much is certain: He may have altered the weekend plans for a bunch of people. Anyone within 10 strokes of the lead after Friday's round will make the cut, and a high percentage of the 93-player field was looking good as of late Thursday afternoon. But then Hoffman made five birdies in a six-hole stretch, starting on No. 12, and the standards suddenly got higher going into the second round. Even his only par in that sequence felt like a birdie, with a penalty stroke for hitting into the water on No. 13.

His 65 was the equivalent of about a 63, considering the conditions. Former BYU golfer Mike Weir, appearing in his 18th consecutive Masters, remembered only one comparably windy day — the third round in 2000, his first appearance at Augusta National.

"If you're mishitting it a little bit," Weir said after his 76, "you're just going to get blown off the golf course."

Hoffman was striking it purely and maximizing his scoring opportunities. Others were experiencing disasters in the wind, notably former champion Jordan Spieth with a quadruple bogey on the par-5 No. 15. Thomas Pieters was 5 under through 10 holes and finished even.

"If you catch the wrong gust at the wrong time, then you look stupid. Like I did on 12," Pieters said. "But that's just Augusta, I guess."

kkragthorpe@sltrib.com Twitter: @tribkurt